Category: Gardening

When Ambar brought home a Zucchini plant from the nursery (“we’re only planting one this year”), it turned out to be three plants all intertwined. So, we’re getting about a zucchini a day. I’ve been sautéing it, adding it to frittata, and baking it but it’s still the green Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Then I ran across this lovely post from Michael Ruhlman:

I like zucchini. Julienned and sauteed in butter it’s a simple summer side dish. Add some nuts, herbs and a vinaigrette to zucchini you’ve salted for ten minutes and it’s a revelation (raw zucchini salad). ﻿

That inspired me to try grating and salting zucchini for a salad and wow — it’s wonderful.

This is essentially a bread salad without the bread. The zucchini picks up all of the flavors and brings them together harmoniously.

Ingredients

1 pound zucchini

1/2-3/4 pounds tomato, cut up

1 small red onion, finely minced

1 small bunch of basil, washed and leaves minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Juice of 1 small lime (optional)

Process

If the zucchini is fresh from your yard or the farmer’s market, soak for about 10 minutes in a bowl of water to remove the dirt from the skin. Grate using the large holes on a box grater, toss with some salt, and let rest about 10 minutes. Pour into a colander and squeeze out the excess liquid (zucchini should be relatively dry.)

Return the zucchini to a bowl, add tomatoes, basil, onion, and garlic. Season with salt and pepper, dress with oil and vinegar (and lime juice, if you have it.) Let sit for about an hour to give the flavors a chance to blend.

This salad would be wonderful with some fresh mozzarella or ricotta salata.

I’ve learned that Springfield, Illinois just doesn’t garden like the North. The flowering dogwoods everywhere were a clue. Broccoli and brussels sprouts definitely sulk, so on a whim this year I rescued a dozen runty, overstressed collard plants from an end-of-season nursery and put them in the garden I tend for my employer.

They are looking beautiful! Now, how do I go about preparing them for a vegetarian? Local wisdom is to boil them with a pork hock or smoked turkey neck. Anyone have a suggestion for preparation? I’m leaning towards a light saute with onions and soy sauce for starters, but don’t even know if I’m supposed to be picking the young leaves or the old leaves…

A friend of mine sent this to a local (San Francisco Bay area) mailing list recently, and has given permission for it to be reposted here. Her suggestions on prioritizing what to grow given limited space especially caught my eye (and I am now mumbling about growing strawberries in hanging pots, to elfin’s bafflement — Ambar)

Nadja, The Yakima Kid, writes:

I’ve been raising as much of our own food as I can since I quit working some years ago; vertigo and monitors don’t play well with each other. I have been seeing a lot on the various websites about people starting vegetable gardens to save money during the recession, so I figured I’d post here about our experiences. Also, if anyone wants to start a garden, I’m willing and able to assist you in finding choices that will help whether you have a house with a yard or an apartment deck.

Raised bed gardening is generally the most efficient – but it is important when gardening to use water wisely. A vegetable garden will consume far less water than a lawn. Other things to consider are dwarf and semi-dwarf fruit trees, berries of all sorts, and especially primocane raspberries and blackberries. Primocane berries produce on first year canes and will also give a second crop on the lower portion of the cane the following year instead of one having to wait for the second year for a crop; what I do to reduce disease and insect carryovers is I simply harvest the first year crop and cut all the canes to the ground in the fall after bearing. The soil in much of this area is a bit too sweet (alkaline), so some crops, like blueberries, don’t grow well without heavy amendments or specialized raised beds.

Using intensive techniques and summer pruning, we have two semi-dwarf apples, six dwarf citrus, a semi-dwarf nectarine and a semi-dwarf peach, a dwarf nectarine and a dwarf peach, a row of columnar apples, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, and a number of raised vegetable beds. We raise strawberries in hanging planters because otherwise the slugs destroy them; I prefer large Bloommasters and have them hooked up to drip irrigation which gives them about five minutes a day in mid summer which is very efficient, given that the large Bloommaster holds nearly two dozen plants; it is advertised to hold close to three dozen, but that intensity actually lowers production per planter. I raise potatoes in bags or buckets. Bloommasters are expensive, but with strawberries will pay for themselves within three years. They double as decorative hanging planters and can replace porch ornamental hanging planters with productive food.

It’s also a good idea to plant a few landscape plants to attract hummingbirds and other birds; hummingbirds not only sip nectar; but they are insect Hoovers. We grow the wild Pacific filberts primarily for the birds and animals but a little bit for ourselves. There are landscape plants that are low water use that also provide people food; one example is Oregon grape which provides fruits for pies, jellies, and jams. Be careful which plants you select; California Bay is a major host to Sudden Oak Death, and currants are involved in the life cycle of a blister rust.

Tomatoes can be grown in those cheap five gallon nursery containers which keeps them out of slug range. You can get some of the parthenogenic greenhouse varieties, put them in a room with daylight fluorescent lighting, and have year round production; we keep ours in the family room which gets southwest light and is often occupied so the lights are on most evenings. We replaced our ornamental houseplants with tomatoes and so we now get food for the inputs that used to go simply to looking pretty.

When choosing plants for the garden, grow the more expensive products as your first priority. We raise fruit instead of shell beans because split peas, and pinto beans are comparatively inexpensive while raspberries and strawberries are extremely expensive and cantaloupe isn’t cheap. Check seeds and plants for climate adaptations; some varieties that do poorly in this area are sold anyway because they are popular products; for example, Red Delicious apple really doesn’t like it down by the Bay but some places sell it because of customer demand.

Indian Runner ducks can reproduce without a pond and are also reasonable egg layers. They seem to enjoy eating slugs; but from time to time take an interest in berries and fruits, so you have to watch them. Chickens are very good and hens will lay whether or not there is a rooster in the area. Leghorns will kick out an average of an egg per day. Rabbits can be grazed in the yard and fed kitchen scraps as well; they’ll need protection from raccoons and cats at night just like poultry.

Here in California, spring is just beginning to peek out through the winter rains. The days are getting longer, it’s easier to get out of bed in the morning, and the local plants are just beginning to flower. Soup replaces stew and the bread rises a bit more quickly.